Nikkei Futures oddly enough was a week behind in having a weekly 3LB reversal down. It's looking like this week will be confirmation. This is a log chart so that candle is no joke. Most of the Asia markets are participating in this move down. It's 23:19 ET so it's still early in the trading session and the final move down is not yet known.

I've been reading an watching a lot on the crisis... As always, it's hard to sift through what's utter bull****, and what's useful information...

Whenever I can, I'll post things that, IMO, might be intelligent and useful for readers here... In saying that, if someone reads something and happens to KNOW that it is false or misleading, PLEASE SPEAK UP... I think we're all served by getting as close to THE TRUTH as possible (and as most know - "The Ministry of Truth" - isn't a very reliable source)...

Normal is ~ 0.15 uSv (microSieverts, or millionths of Sievert) per hour. It varies widely.

A dose of 1-2 Sieverts will have you puking. Once you get past 2 Sieverts you start seeing serious illness and possibly death, after about 50 Sieverts you'ce pretty much certain to die. You can tolerate more radiation if it's a low dose over a long time than a higher dose for a short time.

So let's call 1 Sv "bad," and let's also give you a week to get to that dose (figure evacuating, etc). A week has 168 hours in it, so a dose rate of 1 Sv/168 = 0.00595 Sv / hour is our "bad" threshold. I'll round to 0.006 to make life easy; this is 6 mSv (milliSeiverts) or 6000 uSv (microsieverts.)

This is for acute radiation sickness. Cancer, infertility, and the like can happen at much lower levels, indeed _any_ ionizing radiation increases mutation rates and theoretically increases cancer risk. Quite a few consider 100 mSv as the cut-off, that's one-tenth of a Sievert, and would make the cut-off 4,000X normal background.

Watching the radiation meters today, I saw one prefecture hit 4,200 nGy (nanoGrays). Four our purposes Sieverts and Grays can be used interchangably. 4200 nGy is approximately 4.2 uSv, about 28X normal background levels.

If you want perspective, the hot zone around Chernobyl during the accident was ~ 3600 Sv.

That's 24,000,000,000 (24 Billion) times normal background radiation.

If I were in Tokyo, I'd be concerned, hell, I probably would be packing, but I wouldn't be panicing just yet. Radiation levels would need to be more than 100 times what's been measured away from the plant to get to a consequential level.

Prices for key technology components extended gains on Tuesday, as damage at Japanese plants and infrastructure caused by Friday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami threatens to disrupt the global manufacturing chain longer than many had expected.

Dozens of Japanese firms from component makers to electronics firms and automakers are keeping their plants shuttered, while damage to infrastructure including power, roads, rails and ports will take months to repair.

The prospect of prolonged supply disruptions sent global companies scrambling for alternative sources of high-tech components in particular, a sector where Japan is still a dominant player.http://cryptogon.com/?p=21149

"Gardiner called the U.S. position an "unusual abdication of leadership by the world's only superpower." Though the administration wants any potential intervention to have a broad base of support, Gardiner said that whenever the United States steps aside on an international crisis, it creates a "vacuum" and can become an excuse for "inaction."

"TOKYO, March 15 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei share average plunged 10.6 percent on Tuesday, posting the worst two-day rout since 1987, as hedge funds bailed out after reports of rising radiation near Tokyo. Many mutual funds were left on the sidelines, leaving them poised to dump shares into any rebound."

The building that houses the No. 4 reactor at Tokyo Electric’s Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has two holes in it and water in the spent fuel pool may be boiling, Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said in Tokyo.

“If it is boiling, the water level will drop and hydrogen will be released,” Nishiyama said.

I was reading over last night's thread & comments. CV wrote something about the spent fuel and how a particularly bad scenario would be a fire where that is stored. I would swear that someone on Bloomberg said that there was a fire in that very place while I was fixing lunches this morning. If this doesn't get controlled quickly people everywhere are going to stop worrying about how to trade this thing and start worrying about what they need to do to prepare.

I need to give credit to Andy big time because his charts have been the same for about 5 months now for the most part and I was working heavily off of them, even back then his charts were building up for this move, none of us of course knew there would be a disaster like this though.

I think the big meet of this move is above over now though....but we'll see, it always had the potential to develop into something more ominous, where we just stair step down for 12 months now, each time we move up bulls will JBTFD thinking it's all over, and if recent history is a guide, they'll be telling you the trend is up all the way down.

From February 1st... (Andy posted this then, but it seemed particularly appropriate to repost.)

Only a few times per decade is a market poised for a drastic change in behavior and trend. The S&P is in such a situation right now, where the size and speed of its future move could be so large and so fast that it suggests a MAJOR, national or international EVENT is looming. Based on timing parameters, this could begin any day from now until about mid February. It could start from either a higher or lower level than the S&P is trading at right now (1303 Mar.). The last time I stated such a thing was on a radio interview with Ike Iossif just 1-2 weeks before September 11, 2001.

Let me make it clear, I have NO IDEA what THE EVENT will be, but it is important to be aware of this possibility and prepare accordingly. Based on wave structure, once the S&P's "bull market" rally is over, a new decline should return it to 11100 (that is a 200 point drop or nearly a 20% decline) in less than 3 months! If and when that occurs, it will confirm the S&P has begun a 1-2 year bear market that will eventually place the S&P back in the 800-900 range!

...Earlier Prime Minister Naoto Kan urged all Japanese living within a 30 kilometer radius of the plant to stay indoors. He also called for calm and added that he would head an integrated headquarters made up of government officials and representatives from the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for handling the nuclear crisis.

"There is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," Kan said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said higher levels of radiation recorded near the plant could have an adverse impact on human health. Hence people should go as far away as they could to avoid the threat of radioactive contamination.

"Now we are talking about levels that can impact human health. (The) further away you get from the power plant or reactor, the value should go down," Edano added.

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said efforts to put out the fire at the spent fuel storage pond of the Fukushima No.1 plant had succeeded.

Earlier an IAEA statement said the blaze at the plant had resulted in radioactivity being released "directly" into the atmosphere. Based on information provided by Tokyo, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said dose rates of up to 400 millisievert per hour had been reported at the power plant site...http://news.ino.com/headlines/?newsid=31520110540

I have an options question -- I don't want trading advice here, but some framework for how to evaluate the decision. I own the May 120 SPY puts. I don't usually buy OTMs because I've had bad experience with them before. (So why this time? Anticipating the end of whatever wave we may or may not be in, I guess.) I've found that the "theoretical pricing" and the real world don't line up too often. I bought these things the day after the 1344 peak and they have basically waffled between plus 15% and minus 15% ever since. Basically it seems that you need price to move in a straight line or the chop destroys the value of the option. So, I'm planning to sell into "strength" this morning, even though they won't be ITM, they should be in the green for me. I imagine, that barring the complete destruction of the main island of Japan, that there will be a relief rally of some sort, and even if we do only get to Tim Knight's 1280 that will crush these stupid things again. Am I missing anything here? Thanks.

I like the idea of his trade if we get that bounce, as I said last few days, I'll add to my shorts there as well, but I think you have to have a very good exit plan there, I'm not yet so confident that the run that started in 09 is completely over yet.

I guess the bottom line is, unless you are trading intraday like the I-man, it's not time to go long yet imo.

remember when we were talking about how 2010's gains would be wiped out in a matter of a few weeks. Well, I'm not sure we're going all the way down to 1130's on this move but look for example, at the DAX.

You're not kidding about the DAX. We have reinsurers here too... Thanks for the options lession. Those OTMs are for selling, not buying. Sometimes, though, they are hard to resist :-) I've got a ton of April ITMs, and having really mixed feelings about that this morning. Not fun to make money during so much misery -- I guess that's the curse of the bear.

Perhaps the closest recent domestic analogy to what Japan is going through right now is the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Just as is the case with the Japanese stock market, Wall Street plunged on the day it eventually reopened following those attacks.

I swear, some of the comments at the Ritholtz blog are absolutely idiotic...

---

"but will shake it off as time passes just as every other country that has suffered a disaster has shaken it off over time. Uncertainty and fear, and probably a lack of buyers are motivating the fall in equities. Buyers will probably continue to sit on the sidelines until the dust settles."

...as soon as the dust settles?

where, on your rice fields in a "packed to the gills country"? And what dust? radioactive particles?

not to make light of 9/11, but I think a more appropriate market comparison is the 2004 tsunami.

if people actually paid attention to the market, rather than predicting the news, then predicting what people will do in reaction to the news (EMH presentation) they'd realize that markets often dont' change their trend just because of events like this. If you go back and look at all the local markets a few months after that tsunami none of them were down. During 9/11 the market was just about completing it's initial move off the highs in the S&P and the market rallied up large into december that year despite the attack.

there are literally hundreds of these examples over the last 100 years.

that markets even trend denies EMH but these people tell such a good story they convince themselves.

what's the point?

the trend changed down before this earthquake happened, and it'll likely change back up before we get any good news, but no doubt there will be an "event" that after the fact everyone will clearly attribute the move in the other direction to, just like in 2010.

the trend changed down before this earthquake happened, and it'll likely change back up before we get any good news, but no doubt there will be an "event" that after the fact everyone will clearly attribute the move in the other direction to, just like in 2010

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I think that's a good point... Basically:

- It's not necessarily THE EVENT that dictates the magnitude, but rather where and how the markets were trending when the event occurred (in that case, it might have similarities to the 12/2004 tsunami

- But one should also consider that a metropolitan area of 35,000,000 people (the 3rd largest economy in the world, with a 200% debt to GDP ratio, and a MAJOR supplier of the worlds electronics & cars is the effective BULLSEYE) here... Not to mention that the 2004 Tsunami didn't cause any nuclear meltdowns...

Oh I expect half the morons out there are going to start talking about how FORD will do better because we make the cars here...

Forgetting all the while that:

- A great number of Toyotas, Nissans, etc. are "manufactured" here in the US anyway

- or, that ANY US manufactured car has "components" in it that are made in Japan

Not to make TOO much of that - because I have NO CLUE as to how radiation might seep into the manufacturing of components... After all, that stuff has to be manufactured in pretty airtight fabrication facilities...

CNBC has entered the fever-swamp realm..Some guy just came on and said the Fed will do QE3 even though no one expects it (except everyone on Wall St…) and that “shadowy forces” are buying the market every afternoon between 2 and 4 pm to keep equities propped up….Ah yes, the “plunge protection team” at work…

POSSIBLE PACIFIC FALLOUT"Chilean Sea bass? Contaminants accumulate in apex predators (top of the food chain) such as Tuna, or even in grazers. For example, biological anthropologists have (since 1986) found high levels of thyroid and other cancers in the Chuckchi people of far eastern Russia (they live on the peninsula closest to Alaska)-a huge distance downwind from the Chernobyl incident. It was found that the radioactive isotopes from the fallout had accumulated in the lichens that the reindeer ate that the Chuckchi indigenous folks ate.

My point with this comment is that exposure to radioactivity in the ambient environment is not the only problem. Another problem is contaimination of water supplies. A greater problem is the gradual accumulation and sequestration of radioactive isotopes in food sources such as predatory fish, sharks, and livestock."

we want to see some sort of wave sequence from 2/18 high that we count a-b-c-d-e

it's possible that the c wave completed today, and we are currently in wave d but I haven't spent time checking the figures on this. either way, the b wave top is up around the chop so the d wave is going to alternate with that move which was a sharp retracement. it shouldn't allow us to break above that 1280 on the cash.

if you just draw the basic lines over the squiggles it's a purty picture.

I don’t publish this here because I want to say “I told you so”. Really. The reason for the post is to promote our unique intermediate-term technical forecasting.We posted this on CreateCapital/CreateCoin Premium on 2/16/11…Nasdaq Comp’s low today; 2616.It’s as pretty as a picture!

during a real wall of worry, people don't immediatly try and describe natural disasters as bullish, as has been done since this first hit, before the nuclear problems were even known people were out with buy calls.

reading that diary of 1985 when we broke out to the upside in the third of a third of a third wave it was surprising even for me to read and see in the data how bearish people were when that happened. everyone was super bearish and hated everything, totally different from today on every level.

you guys nailed it by saying people have been conditioned

now I'm seeing comments all over about how they may mention QE3 today and to buy ahead of it.

I got through school just fine without an iPod or an iPad and besides, it's already been shown that schools that pass these out are then using the computers to spy on students in the privacy of their own home.

The 9.0 magnitude quake (the fourth-largest recorded since 1900) was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet (see NASA's before and after photos at right). The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet. As Japan's eastern coastline sunk, the tsunami's waves rolled in.

While I realize it's a microsecond...that to me, is amazing.

makes me feel very, very tiny and also makes me laugh a little about people that think they can "save the planet"

& I'm pretty sure that as soon as the NCAA Basketball Tournament is over... Obama will get on the teleprompter and announce that he's going to 'kick some more ass' (because Hawaii is being threatened)...

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This Blog's primary focus is on trading based upon technical analysis. It is run by "AmenRa" and "AndyT," quasi-anonymous traders who employ technical analysis to assess market conditions and trading opportunities. AmenRa utilizes 3LB techniques, Moving Averages and Fibonacci sequences. AndyT's analysis relies primarily on "Wave Theory" and Fibonacci sequences. The Comments Section is uncensored and open to the public. Please try and adhere to the "Blogger Policy."